Nothing beats a live conversation

Nothing beats a live conversation with the expert.

Anyone who has walked someone through something they built knows this. Partway through, the person stops you with a question. You know the answer, and you know where it lives. You go back to the slide where you covered it, or jump ahead to the part of the video that shows it, or open the product and click straight to the right screen. You hear what they’re really asking, which is often different from the words they used. By the end they understand it, and you’ve learned what trips people up.

The trouble is that you can’t be everywhere at once. So we record the walkthrough and send the link. A recording keeps your words and loses the conversation. People hold on to their questions, send them later in a message with no context, or give up. The feedback you would have heard in the room never reaches you. You give the live version to the few people who can get time on your calendar, and everyone else gets the recording.

I saw this for years as a product manager. A good part of the job was giving the same trainings, explanations and demos, and the ones that went best were the sessions where people kept stopping me with questions. I always wished I could give that version to everyone who needed it.

Questions and feedback are where the value is

Trainings and product demos work the same way. You present something you care about, and people respond. The presenting part records well. The responding part is where a live session earns its time. You answer in the moment, pull up supporting material, go to the right part of the deck or the product without hunting for it, and respond to what someone means.

That’s the part I wanted to scale. So we started with one question: what would it take for someone else to handle that conversation the way you would?

Deputy makes your recordings interruptible

You give Deputy a walkthrough. You can record your screen, present your slides or a Figma prototype, or upload a recording of a training or demo you’ve already given. Deputy learns from your clicks and voiceover. Then you share a link.

Everyone who opens it gets the walkthrough one on one, and they can interrupt at any point, by voice or by typing, the way they would interrupt you. Deputy pauses and answers. It goes where you would go: back to the slide where you explained it, to the moment in the recording where you set it up, or to the document that covers it. Its answers cite where they came from, down to the line you wrote or the moment you said it. When the question is settled, Deputy picks the walkthrough back up where the person left off.

Deputy sticks to what you’ve told it

This is the most important thing to understand about Deputy. It answers from your walkthrough and the material you give it, and it stays faithful to that material.

There will be gaps, and that’s expected. You don’t have to teach it everything on the first day. Like any good deputy, it knows when to admit it doesn’t know. When a question goes past what you’ve covered, Deputy tells the person so and sends the question to you with the conversation attached. You reply once. Your answer goes back to the person who asked, and Deputy adds it to its Memory so it’s ready the next time someone asks. You decide whether that answer stays with your team or can be shared with anyone.

That makes you the backstop. Questions you’ve already answered get answered for everyone, and the ones that need you come straight to you.

A memory that piles new notes on top of old ones ends up holding two answers to the same question, and nobody notices until someone gets the wrong one. Deputy checks each new thing you teach it against what it already knows. When you tell it something has changed, it updates every place the old version appeared and shows you each edit, with an undo. When a file you add disagrees with its notes, it asks you which is right. You can read its Memory at any time.

You see everything your Deputy does

Every conversation comes back to you. You can replay any session with its interruptions marked, read what people asked and how Deputy answered, and see each piece of feedback next to the screen it was about. Across all of those conversations, Deputy groups what people keep asking into themes.

When you give a walkthrough live, you learn from the few people in the room. When your Deputy gives it, you learn from everyone who took it.

Deputy for trainings and product demos

You probably give both already.

Trainings. You give a training once, and the questions keep coming for weeks. They come from people who missed it, and from people who were there and are now trying the process themselves. Record the session or a dry run, or upload the recording you already have, and share it. Each person gets a replay they can stop at the step they’re stuck on, ask to see again, and come back to later. Deputy brings you the questions your training didn’t cover, so the next version covers them.

Product demos. Whether you’re showing your product to a buyer or showing a new feature to your users, the demo does its work in their questions and reactions, and you can only give so many demos yourself. Record yours, or upload the one you already send, and share it with everyone who should see it. A buyer can ask to see the workflow they care about and forward the link to teammates, who ask their own questions. A user can tell Deputy where they got lost, and Deputy saves that feedback with the screen it was about, then shows them what it saved so they can correct it. Anything your material doesn’t cover, like pricing exceptions or roadmap dates, comes to you. Before your next call, you can read what each person asked.

Where to start

Pick the walkthrough you’ve given the most times: the onboarding session or the demo you know by heart. If you’ve already recorded it, upload that recording. Send it to the next person who needs it, and read what they ask.

Nothing beats a live conversation with the expert. None of us has ever been able to have that conversation with everyone, one on one. Your Deputy can, and you’re still the expert behind every conversation it has.

Robert